Remember how I said yesterday that Stravinsky wrote really good riffs? Turns out that I’m not the only one to think so. John Williams thought so, basing sections of Star Wars: Episode IV on Rite of Spring, which George Lucas had used as the temp soundtrack – then, for good measure, biting out chunks of it for his famous Jaws theme. Raymond Watts thought so, using the same sample in different tracks on The Swining. I’m not sure if Sufjan Stevens sampled it, but Foetus certainly did, and the Beastie Boys very definitely did.
The makers of the Fairlight CMI synthesizer certainly liked Stravinsky, since the preset “ORCH5” sample is from Firebird, and thus made its way into … oooh … all of the pop songs of the 1980s. I figured that I would actually run out of enthusiasm for the idea long before I could ever run out of tunes that sample Stravinsky, but thought it would be fun to start tonight at the more tenuous end, with a song by Duran Duran that makes heavy use of the Fairlight.
Reinspired 
Okay, so I remember the passionate, desperate yearning that suffused my being as I anticipated the release of this song back in….the day. XD Once in a while, I miss being a teenager. But not for very long. I was actually a bit disappointed with this track when it came out, but I wound up really enjoying it in the long run. While it’s rather dated, it’s also a tune I’m always happy to hear.
I loved it from the outset and still do. 🙂